


Intersections

by Roshwen



Category: Leverage, The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Also Parker and nicknames is a dangerous combo, Because roads and lives intersect somehow, But Also Funny, Crossover, Eliot Spencer and Jacob "Jake" Stone are Twins, Gen, Humor, Maggie Collins and Jake have a strictly professional history, Poor Jake somebody should have warned him, Rebuilding relationships is hard, TW for mentions of the Sapphire Monkey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 16:54:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17328860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roshwen/pseuds/Roshwen
Summary: 'Hey, El? You said you had a contact in LA who did some art appraisals for you, but she was a bit too honest to get involved any further. And. You know. Nathan Ford was married to Maggie Collins.’Eliot was only too painfully aware that Nathan Ford had been married to Maggie Collins.Or: two brothers talk and reminisce, because that's what you do if you're trying to rebuild your relationship after ten years of 'I thought you were dead'-ness. Jake asks questions. Eliot comes to a couple of conclusions. And in the end, nobody has touched Hardison's Thief Juice, which is just a shame.





	Intersections

‘Hey, El?’

Eliot stopped wiping the last smudges off his already spotless stove and turned to where his twin brother was leaning against the counter, one of Hardison’s Thief Juices in hand. Though not sipping it, and even from where Eliot was standing he could see that the bottle was still remarkably full. He made a face. ‘If you want something else, there’s some Heineken at the back of the fridge,’ he said, nodding at Jake’s (what could only optimistically be called) beer. ‘Just don’t let Hardison see you, or he’ll pout at you and tell you it’s _an acquired taste but you should really give it a shot_.’

Jake sniggered, took a sip, made a face, coughed and put the bottle down. ‘Yeah, thanks. I’ll have one of those Heinekens instead. Christ, is it _supposed_ to taste like someone put a load of gummi frogs and orange soda through a blender?’

‘Knowing Hardison?’ Eliot shook his head and held out a green bottle that Jake took gratefully. ‘Most likely.’

The bottle cap popped and landed on the counter with a clink. ‘Oh, that’s better,’ Jake muttered. He looked back to Eliot, who had finished cleaning up the kitchen and was now getting his own beer out of the fridge. ‘Hey, did you hear Parker’s got me a new nickname again?’

Eliot chuckled, holding his bottle in a kind of salute before opening it up. ‘What, you mean to tell me you’re no longer Clone Eliot?’

‘You mean CE,’ Jake corrected with a grin. ‘And nope. She found out I can’t tell different types of goons apart, so she’s finally convinced we’re not actually the same person. I think.’

‘It’s the haircuts,’ Eliot said. ‘And the way they stand. It’s not that hard, Jay.’

‘Uh-huh. And who painted Las Meninas again?’

‘Oh, shut up.’

‘Thought so,’ Jake said smugly, following Eliot out of the kitchen and towards the criminal headquarters that doubled as the living room. ‘Although I think I’m gonna miss being Clone Eliot. At least it was better than when she insisted on calling me Jake the Fake.’

‘I don’t know.’ Eliot hummed. ‘I thought her first one was the best. Eliot’s Evil Twin. EET. Had a nice ring to it.’

‘Oh man, I forgot about EET,’ Jake said with a snort. ‘That was a good one. Although I’m still not sure whether Hardison dubbing me Double ET was necessary.’

‘What,’ Eliot sniggered, ‘you mean you don’t wanna phone home?’

Jake glared. ‘Shut up.’

Silence fell in the room as both brothers nursed their beers, both a little uncomfortable with each other still after ten years’ separation and a recent surprise reunion. Eliot glanced at Jake, seeing the same awkwardness he was attempting to hide himself mirrored in the half smile and the way his brother seemed supremely interested in his beer all of a sudden.

Eliot coughed. ‘So what’s she callin’ you now then? Arty Eliot again?’ Parker had tried that one as well, but it had been short-lived as it ‘sounded too much like Archie Eliot and that was just weird.’

Eliot didn’t blame her.

‘No,’ Jake replied, putting his beer down and raking a hand through his hair. Eliot watched it stick up in all directions and none, and hid his smile in his own beer bottle. ‘Uhm. She’s callin’ me ME now. Told me it was short for Maggie Eliot. Hey, El?’

Eliot lowered his beer, feeling a little wary all of a sudden at the frown on Jake’s face. ‘Yeah?’

‘You’ve worked with Nathan Ford, right?’

‘Yeah, I did.’ Eliot didn’t say _worked with_ might not exactly be the right way to phrase things; _pulled each other out of the hell pit of their own making_ might be closer to the mark. ‘He left about a year ago. Why?’

‘Only you said you had a contact in LA who did some art appraisals for you, but she was a bit too honest to get involved any further. And. You know. Nathan Ford was married to Maggie Collins.’

Eliot was only too painfully aware that Nathan Ford had been married to Maggie Collins. What surprised him a little, was that his brother knew this too. ‘You know Maggie?’ he asked, trying to keep his voice level even as he cringed inwardly at the memory of his spectacularly failing ‘date’ or his even more spectacularly failing to get her out of a Ukranian jail discreetly. ‘You know, that’s not the worst nickname by the way.’

‘Not… personally,’ Jake said slowly. ‘And yeah. Could be way worse, I know. But. You know, the art world, it’s small and while she was… otherwise occupied, she directed some of her appraisals my way. And she saved my butt a couple of times too, so you know. We only emailed and I know it’s five or six years ago by now, but I’d still kinda like to meet her in person. I was… kinda impressed with her work.’

‘That was two _kinda’s_ in two sentences, Jay,’ Eliot grinned. ‘Also, Maggie’s cool. But way out of your league, so don’t even think about it. Ford would kill you.’

‘Yeah, and so would Jones,’ Jake said, shaking his head and picking up his beer again. ‘But nah. Strictly professionally speaking, if you’ve got her contacts I’d like to get in touch. Tell her I’m still grateful for her taking a second look at that fucking Sapphire Monkey, for example.’

Eliot went very still. ‘What Sapphire Monkey?’ he asked, keeping his focus on his beer, on Jake, on this conversation, anything to keep himself from spinning backwards and returning to one of the least favorite jobs he had ever done in his life.

‘Damn nuisance, is what it was,’ Jake growled. ‘Golden monkey, supposed to be Chinese Qin Dynasty with a sapphire the size of your head. Had me fooled like an idiot, until Maggie took one look at the pictures I sent her and told me it was fake.’

Eliot blinked. ‘Fake.’

Jake nodded. ‘Fake as Aunty Myra’s teeth. For a start, it wasn’t Qin but _Qing,_ which is only eighteen centuries or so later, and the sapphire was put in even later than that. And it was synthetic, too, made and cut in the 1920s. Would have cost my client a pretty penny if he’d bought it for the price he had in mind, let me tell you.’

‘Fuck,’ Eliot groaned. ‘Alright. Fake monkey.’ He rubbed absentmindedly at his shoulder, over a scar he’d gotten courtesy of the North Korean Special Forces, and decided not to tell Jake that that whole business had cost him a six-figure paycheck and almost his reputation too, until he finally had been able to convince his client he had acted in good faith. His client had not been happy, but had at last taken Eliot’s word for it that, between all the guns and the shouting and the torturing, he had not exactly been able to get a good look at the damn thing.

‘You alright?’ Jake asked, raising an eyebrow. Eliot realized he was holding his beer so tight his knuckles shone white. He put it down and flexed his fingers, to get rid of the cramp. ‘Yeah, sure,’ he grunted.

He breathed out, getting himself back under control. ‘Any other business she help you with?’

Jake smiled and relaxed back into the couch. ‘Sure. Like I said, we helped each other out. At that time she was… well. You know what happened to the kid, I assume.’

Eliot merely nodded.

‘She sent me a message saying she wouldn’t be working for some time, but there was an urgent matter and her boss couldn’t be kept waiting so could I please have a look and tell Mr. Blackpoole what I thought,’ Jake continued. ‘And it was… odd. And interesting, and I’ve meant to ask you about it because it’s something that I think Sophie Devereaux would know more about.’ He paused before grinning at Eliot. ‘Five identical Van Goghs turning up in a storage shed just outside New York City. Seems like her kind of thing, from what you’ve told me.’

Eliot couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Yeah, that’d be her alright. Or at least, her old boss. Partner. Whatever.’ He sniggered again. ‘You find out which one was real, though?’

Now Jake sniggered too. ‘Nope. ‘Cause they were all fake too. And so was the one hangin’ pretty in the Met, somehow, even though the director swore that it must’ve been real. And you know, I ah, I’d like to know where the _real_ real Van Gogh has gotten to, if she wouldn’t mind.’

Eliot thought back to the few glimpses he had had of Sophie’s apartment in Mayfair, the couple of times a job had taken them across the pond. He wasn’t an art expert like his brother, but he thought he could recognize a Van Gogh when he saw one.

The man had a pretty distinctive style, after all.

‘I don’t think she’d mind,’ he said instead, getting up to replace the two empty bottles on the table. ‘But I gotta warn you to keep it _professional_ when talkin’ to her.’ He glared at Jake, who was doing a very bad job at radiating professional innocence before breaking into a grin again. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Or what. Ford’s gonna kill me?’

‘What, Ford? No,’ Eliot called from the kitchen before returning and handing one bottle to Jake. ‘ _She_ is. Or at least, she’ll rob you blind and then make you thank her for it.’

Jake lifted his beer in a toast. ‘Point taken. Also, remind me never to let her into the Library, no matter how much she tries to make me.’

‘Sure,’ Eliot said, taking another long sip of beer. ‘I’ll try. No promises, though. You know she once charmed her way into becoming a member of the Belgian Royal Family?’

Jake didn’t know that, but he easily believed it. They sat together for a long time, as outside darkness fell and the noise of the Brewpub outside grew silent, talking, reminiscing and quietly wondering about how two lives that could not have been more different, still held some very weird intersections. And when, at the end of the night, Eliot’s partners in life and crime came back from wherever they had been hiding out (somewhere expensive, judging by Parker’s loot, although thankfully she hadn’t stolen any sapphires; Eliot was pretty sure he never wanted to see those again), Jake went home. To his own thief. Whom Eliot had also met, although he had not really judged the time right to share that fact.

He doubted Jones would nurse happy memories of that time, which was why that would have to be a matter for later.

But still, Eliot could not help but feel that rebuilding a relationship after ten years of ‘I thought you were dead’-ness was hard work. But the groundwork had been laid, and from now on, it was just a matter of patience. And time. They’d get there, brick by brick, and if the thing they were building now looked different than the one that burned down all those years ago, well.

‘Hey Eliot,’ came an offended cry from the kitchen. ‘I see that half bottle of Thief Juice standing there, and I notice all the Heineken you think I don’t know about has suddenly disappeared. You wanna tell me what happened?’

Some things just change. And with a sigh and a shrug, Eliot went into the kitchen to go yell at Hardison, because other things just _never_ change.


End file.
